Southern Exposure

There is something uniquely appealing about a good Southern novel. When winter seems never-ending, readers can become immersed in a powerful story that takes place in a warmer climate. Booklovers have debates about what must be included on the Best Southern Novels list. The following are some of the books most often nominated:

The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner (1929): The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the man-child Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (1885): Huckleberry Finn, rebel against school and church, rafter of the Mississippi, and savior of Jim the runaway slave, is the archetypal American maverick. Fleeing the respectable society that wants to "sivilize" him, Huck Finn  shoves off with Jim on a rhapsodic raft journey down the Mississippi River.

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (1960): A young girl growing up in an Alabama  town in the 1930s learns of injustice and violence when her father, a widowed  lawyer, defends a black man falsely accused of rape.

The Moviegoer - Walker Percy (1961): Winner of the 1961 National Book Award, this dazzling novel established Walker Percy as one of the major voices in Southern   literature. The Moviegoer is Binx Bolling, a young New Orleans stockbroker who surveys the world with the detached gaze of a Bourbon Street dandy even as he yearns for a spiritual redemption he cannot bring himself to believe in.

Wise Blood - Flannery O’Connor (1952): This classic of twentieth-century literature tells the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his desperate fate; this tale of redemption gives us one of the most riveting characters in twentieth-century American fiction. Wise Blood is a savage satire of America's secular, commercial culture, as well as the humanism it holds so dear.

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston (1937): Hurston's beloved classic--one of the most important American novels of the 20th century--follows the fortunes of Janie Crawford, a woman who was married three times and had been tried for the murder of one of her husbands in the black town of Eaton, Florida.

Look Homeward Angel - Thomas Wolfe (1929): The novel follows the trajectory of Eugene Gant, a brilliant and restless young man whose wanderlust and passion shape his adolescent years in rural North Carolina. Wolfe’s largely autobiographical story about the quest for a greater intellectual life has resonated with and influenced generations of readers, including some of today's most important novelists.

 All the King’s Men - Robert Penn Warren (1946): Set in the 1930s, this Pulitzer Prize- winning novel traces the rise and fall of demagogue Willie Stark, a fictional character who resembles the real-life Huey "Kingfish" Long of Louisiana. Stark begins his political career as an idealistic man of the people but soon becomes  corrupted by success and caught between dreams of service and an insatiable lust for power.